Compare backup power options

A battery backup UPS (uninterruptible power supply) lives between the wall and your equipment. When the grid drops, it switches to its internal battery in milliseconds — fast enough that a desktop computer, NAS drive, or modem never notices. That instant switchover is the whole point. What a UPS does not give you is meaningful runtime: the sealed lead-acid battery inside a typical $100 tower holds roughly 360Wh on paper, and manufacturer runtime charts often show only one to a few hours even at small loads, because inverter overhead eats a large share at low draw.

A portable power station is the opposite trade. It won’t (usually) switch over automatically — you plug things in after the lights go out — but it carries far more usable capacity, recharges from a wall outlet, a car port, or a solar panel, and works anywhere: the kitchen table, a campsite, the car. For the same router-and-modem load, a 300–500Wh station is estimated at ≈ 15 hr to ≈ 26 hr using our standard formula, versus the one-to-four-hour reality of most consumer UPS units.

Price tells the same story. A UPS is cheaper up front ($60–$150) but is single-purpose furniture. A power station costs more ($150–$450 for the small classes) and does more jobs. Some stations now advertise a UPS or pass-through mode — if hands-off switchover matters to you, verify the claimed switchover time on the spec sheet before counting on it.

A large USB power bank — the 25,000mAh class holds roughly 90Wh — is the cheapest, lightest way to keep phones, tablets, earbuds, hotspots, and a travel router alive for days. It slips into a bag, and because it sits under the 100Wh limit most airlines enforce, it can fly in your carry-on. Its hard limit is just as simple: no AC outlet. If a device charges over USB, a power bank covers it; if it needs a wall plug, it doesn’t.

A 300Wh power station costs three to four times as much and weighs 7–10 lb, but it adds the AC outlet, roughly triple the capacity, and 12V output. That turns “keep my phone alive” into “run my router, charge my laptop the normal way, and power a light for the evening.” Airlines, however, will not accept it — power stations stay home or travel by car.

Many people reasonably end up with both: the power bank as the everyday and travel layer, and a station as the home outage layer. If the budget only covers one, decide based on the single device you most need in an outage — and check its plug.

Watt-hours (Wh) are the fuel tank. Double the Wh and you roughly double the runtime for the same load — but you also raise the price, the weight, and the recharge time. The most common buying mistake we see is paying for a class you’ll never drain: a 2,000Wh station backing up a 15W router is spending four figures on a two-figure problem.

The estimates below use the same formula as our calculators — 85% inverter efficiency with a 10% reserve held back — applied to three everyday loads. Fridge numbers deserve one extra caveat: compressors cycle on and off, so a fridge’s real-world hours usually run two to three times longer than the continuous-running figure shown here.

Portable solar panels are rated at their laboratory maximum — full sun, perfect angle, cool panel. Outdoors you can expect roughly 70% of the rating during peak sun hours, and “peak sun hours” are not daylight hours: most of the continental US sees about 3–6 per day depending on season and weather. Our estimates below use 4.5 peak sun hours at 70% efficiency, the same defaults as the Solar Recharge Calculator.

The practical rule: match the panel to the battery so a day or two of decent sun can refill what you use. A 100W panel paired with a 2,000Wh station will fall further behind every day of a long outage; the same panel on a 300Wh station is a genuinely self-sustaining kit. Also confirm the boring part — connector type and input voltage range — before buying; a DC cable kit solves many mismatches, but not all.

Home internet is one of the cheapest things to back up: a modem and router together draw around 15W. The catch is that “internet” has two failure modes — your power going out, and your provider going down with it. Batteries solve the first. For the second you need a different upstream: a phone hotspot through a travel router, or a satellite internet terminal.

For power-only outages, a UPS gives hands-off continuity for the desk, while a 300Wh station is estimated at ≈ 15 hr for the router-modem pair — an all-day answer that also charges phones. The budget path is a big USB power bank feeding a USB-C travel router (~7W): about ≈ 9.8 hr of Wi-Fi from a $40–$90 battery, provided you have an upstream connection to share. Satellite terminals change the math: a compact Starlink Mini-style satellite internet terminal draws roughly 20–40W, while full residential dishes draw 50–100W and push you up a battery class.

Apartments rule out most traditional backup power. Fuel generators must never run indoors — not in a kitchen, not on an enclosed balcony — which makes battery power the practical (and quiet, and landlord-friendly) option. The good news: apartment loads are small. Internet, phones, lights, a laptop, and a fan cover most people’s real needs, and that is squarely small-to-mid battery territory.

The honest way to buy is by tier, not by fear. Start from what must stay on and for how long where you live — a two-hour blip in a city grid is a different problem than a multi-day storm outage. The tiers below map budget to what actually stays powered; the Gear Finder can turn your specific answers into a capacity class in about a minute.

The runtime math is identical for a budget station and a premium one of the same capacity — our formulas don’t care about the logo. What premium pricing genuinely buys, in rough order of importance: battery chemistry (LiFePO4 cells commonly rated for 2,500–3,500+ cycles, versus roughly 500–800 for typical NMC), faster wall recharging, more inverter surge headroom, expansion-battery support, and longer warranties. Those are real advantages — if you will use them.

Frequency of use is the deciding variable. A battery cycled weekly — solar setups, van life, chronic outages — earns its chemistry and warranty premium quickly. A battery used a few times a year as insurance mostly needs to hold a charge and honor its spec sheet, and the budget class does that fine. Where cheap goes wrong is usually not the cells but the corners: optimistic surge ratings, slow recharge, and vague documentation.

Whichever class you buy, do the same three checks: the rated Wh and continuous output on the actual spec sheet, the surge rating against your largest motor-driven load, and the warranty terms in writing. Our methodology page explains the assumptions we use everywhere on this site.